The passionate pragmatist.

• Author: Davis, Lisa
• Position: COVER STORY

People filing into the Charlotte Convention Center make their way around a small commotion. A woman robed as Lady Justice, glowing with gold paint, points her sword at a few chunks of coal on the sidewalk. Other protesters with signs and a megaphone denounce "the Hypocrite of the Year" about to be honored inside. The target of their ire: Jim Rogers, chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy Corp., the Charlotte-based utility that is expanding a power plant an hour's drive away in Cliffside. The plant burns coal, which is cheap and abundant but releases a noxious mix of pollutants, including carbon dioxide, a prime culprit in global warming. Down the sidewalk is another group that isn't happy with him. It's protesting his efforts to promote a mandatory cap on carbon emissions. That could prove especially costly to one of the nation's largest electric utilities--which produces more than 60% of its U.S. power from coal--and its 4 million customers in the Carolinas and the Midwest.

His critics claim that Rogers is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Inside, accepting an award from the Charlotte Chamber, he puts it another way. "I am where I need to be," he tells the crowd. "In the middle of the road." He knows what direction that road is headed: to a "low-carbon world." And he's determined that Duke will have a say on the best way to get there. It's not going to be an easy journey. Investing in new, cleaner power generation is putting pressure on its low rates. Complicating matters is an economic downturn that has pummeled industrial sales. He describes himself as "a passionate pragmatist." To him, building Cliffside, promoting carbon legislation, developing smart-grid technology--it is all of a piece. "I'm pragmatic about the tradeoffs that have to be made."

Our carbon footprint as a company is defined by three numbers--three, 12 and 41. We're the third-largest emitter of [CO.sub.2] in the U.S. We are the 12th-largest in the world. If we were a country, we'd be 41st." This is how Rogers, 62, begins many speeches. "It's almost confessional," he admits. '"Yes, I have a huge carbon footprint. I am for carbon regulation, and this is how we want to go about doing it.' It gives you credibility to talk about it." He's talked about it in just about every place people are discussing clean energy--from the Copenhagen climate summit to the halls of Congress. This winter morning he's ready to talk about it again, albeit on little sleep. He had flown in late the night before from Washington, where he'd had dinner with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, a top adviser to President Obama. That's the sort of company Rogers keeps these days. He has spent much of his four years as Duke CEO trying to shape carbon legislation. "It's the single largest issue facing our customers and the future of our company."

To prepare for a speech he will give in a few hours, he has been jotting down ideas he got at dinner last night. He settles into an upholstered chair in an office he'll be leaving later this year when Duke moves from its bunkerlike headquarters to a 48-story tower going up across the street. The utility will be leasing 21 floors from Wells Fargo & Co.--what was going to be Wachovia Corp. head-quarters soon will be Duke Energy Center. It's a high-profile move for the utility, whose CEO is always moving at full speed. Rogers "seems like a man on a mission," says John Gartner, senior analyst with Pike Research. "He values his legacy and wants to be seen as someone who helped lead the company into a key transition. ... He wants to be perceived as an agent of change."

Rogers jumps up to retrieve his Blackberry from his desk. "This is another way to think about us," he says, punching buttons. He finds the numbers he's looking for: Duke is third in the Americas in producing carbon-free electricity--thanks to its international hydroelectric plants, three nuclear plants and small but growing wind-power production. That's going into his speeches, he says with a smile. "I'm constantly recutting the numbers, retelling the story."

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Burning fossil fuels such as coal spews out sulfur dioxide, mercury, fine particles and other pollutants that can create smog, damage health and fall to the ground as acid rain. State and federal laws have tried to rein in air polluters. In the late '80s, as a utility CEO in Indiana, Rogers stood apart from his industry to support national Clean Air Act amendments that required utilities to cut sulfur-dioxide emissions. He liked the market-based, cap-and-trade approach to regulation in which total emissions of a pollutant are set and companies get credits to emit a certain amount. Companies that cut emissions below their allowances can sell the excess to others. Supporting the legislation turned out to be a good move, he says. Emitters got room to maneuver as they installed costly pollution scrubbers, and acid rain lessened.

Attention turned to greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that trap heat in the atmosphere. The scientific evidence was mounting that...